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About Michael J. Miller

Miller, who was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine from 1991 to 2005, authors this blog for PC Magazine to share his thoughts on PC-related products. No investment advice is offered in this blog. All duties are disclaimed. Miller works separately for a private investment firm which may at any time invest in companies whose products are discussed in this blog, and no disclosure of securities transactions will be made.

Intel and Avaya Talk Changing IT Goals, Cloud Service Requirements at InterOp

Federated, automated, and client aware cloud services are a major part
of Intel's vision for cloud computing in 2015, according to Kirk
Skaugen, General Manager of Intel's Data Center Group and part of this
morning's keynotes at InterOp. Meanwhile, Steve Bandrowczak, General
Manager of Avaya Data Solutions, talked about how he thought IT
departments had to change to implement the new technologies.

Skaugen focused on changes in cloud computing. He talked about sharing data security across public and private clouds by federated computing.
He said Intel currently uses software as a service for expense accounts,
but it doesn't when it tapes out a new microprocessor, even though it's
very "bursty" because of security and performance concerns. That
may change, he said. Automated computing means making it easier for users or
business groups to provision IT services. And by being client aware, he
said services could be optimized based on device capability, such as
handling downloads differently depending on the speed of the connection
or even the battery life of the device.
Bandrowczak went on to talk about how mobile devices and app stores were being used and said IT departments had to deal with the commoditization of devices. This is much faster and simpler than building IT images. But he asked how you integrated the applications.

He noted that organizations were using social media, but often the information was coming from untrusted users. To deal with all this, he talked about how IT departments have to embrace these changes to take advantage of their features, but also tie them to the back-end infrastructure. Those systems will fundamentally not change, but how you deliver these services will, he said.

For IT guiding principles, Bandrowczak said organizations should focus on people first, delivering these services to "a user of one," deploying technology that is "fit for purpose," and focusing on "results driven innovation."

In a demo, Avaya's Brett Shockley, showed an integrated communications application with features such as video conferencing and application sharing. The demo included a federation of the company directory and Facebook and integration with voice mail systems, multi-point voice conferencing, and instant messaging. And he talked about how this would work on multiple devices, including showing it on an iPad.

Bandrowczak explained how a Virtual Enterprise Network Architecture (VENA) would let companies put in a network fabric that doesn't need to be changed. Implementing a new application on this switching fabric requires one-tenth the IT work in changing the network compared with a traditional network.

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